Generations
by WaterGirl14
Summary: There's more than one way to make a halfa, and there's more than one way to life your life with ghost powers. You can become the town hero, or you can stay under the radar. You can be visible, or behind the scenes. But everyone falls in love the same way. [OC]
1. Sam

The car crash was deafening, and she hadn't even heard it.

When Sam heard the news, she couldn't even scream. It seemed that your voice always failed you when you needed it most. It was a phone call, and she answered all business, all professional, Samantha Manson, who is this? Because of course, she didn't recognize the number.

It was the police station. Her parents were dead. Got hit by a drunk driver on the interstate, driving on the wrong side of the road.

And if she had thought clearly, in that moment, she might have thought that this wasn't how she always expected her parents to die. Because Samantha Manson was a morbid person, and of course she knew how her parents "should" die. They were supposed to grow old, Pamela and Jeremy, and they were supposed to both go together, happy, with her mother in her chic pink dresses she was always fond of, and her father playing along.

Or, perhaps, they should be killed in the line of fire, when some of Danny's enemies figured out that they should target his loved ones – or, in this case, his loved one's loved ones. That would almost have been preferable to this. No warning. No time to grieve. No time to adjust. Just sudden, inexplicable, death.

Sam knew the statistics. She knew how many people were killed by drunk drivers in Amity Park. She knew how many were killed in Fezville, across the way. But she didn't know that becoming a statistic was one of the most painful things she could have experienced.

Danny was there to comfort her, after the crash. As Sam wept, wept for parents that she loved deep down even if she claimed the contrary, wept for parents who had always been there for her when it really counted even if they tried to change her, wept for parents who were imperfect and she wished she could trade for anyone else, Danny was there.

In retrospect, they would agree later, the death of Sam's parents when she was 17 was probably the catalyst for the rest of their lives.

The first thing Sam did when she found out was to cry and wonder why she couldn't scream. The second thing was to cry and call Danny and ask him to pick her up from work – her part-time job at a nearby bowling alley, because Sam thought it was important that she work, that she separate herself from the money she had inherited. No, it wasn't going to be her future, she wanted to go into law enforcement, maybe even law. All of a sudden, though, that didn't matter.

Sam was an orphan at 17, and as she stood with her grandmother and aunt at the funeral, looking at the beautifully engraved stone she'd had made for them, all she could think was, "I am alone."

Danny seemed to understand what she wanted when she said that she needed space, because he didn't leave her side for weeks, and when she truly asked to be by herself, crying and hugging her blankets to her chest, he would vanish from sight, invisible, but even so would not leave. She knew he sat beside her on the bed, hidden from view but rubbing her back, silently.

The will stipulated that she would get it all. The house, the company, the assets. No requirements. No hoops to jump through. Sam had always suspected that they would add a clause into the will, making her marry for money or do something equally stupid, but it turned out that it was just a waste of thought. Her parents loved her, and even if they didn't approve wholly of Danny, they still wanted her to be happy. Maybe, after the world found out that she was dating a superhero, maybe they had changed their minds about him. She never found out. Her father treated him the same as he always had, and her mother never invited him over, nor his parents.

So Sam was alone in her empty mansion, her grandmother, getting old and slowing down from the bright, spry thing she had been, being the only company she had besides her ghost boy. Tucker, Jazz, Valerie, they visited occasionally too, but she suspected that she threw off such a depressing air that only a half-dead man and a wizened-to-the-world, old Jewish woman could stand it for more than an hour.

They let her take as much time as she wanted off from work, but she still quit after a few weeks. Her boss understood. He was an older man, probably about forty or so, and he seemed to know what it was like to lose your parents. Lancer and the principal let her take as much time as she wanted off from school, but that she returned to after a week or so. The gloominess of the mansion, which she had before so thoroughly enjoyed, was stifling, and even if it meant seeing people like Star and Paulina and Dash and Kwan, school was still a place where there were other people around.

She stopped caring about keeping up appearances, though. Let her hair grow out back to the blond she was born with. Stopped dying her eyebrows. Lost the dark make-up, the purple lipstick, the foundation. Wore sweatpants and ragged t-shirts and frayed blue jeans and, occasionally, a black tank top with a purple dot, and plaid green skirt. Sometimes, she heard the girls in the cafeteria talking about her, saying that she looked like a "sad mess." She didn't blame them. Sam herself thought she looked like a ghost.

She'd considered asking Danny to find her parents in the Ghost Zone, to see where they had ended up. She even mentioned it, once. But Danny, with years of wisdom she didn't suspect could come from a teenager, said that not all dead people ended up there, only the ones who still had something they needed to live for.

Well, aren't I something they should be living for?

Yes, he had said, but some things are stronger than love.

Those words broke her heart more than anything else could have, and Sam retreated back to her shell. Yes, slowly, she recovered. Slowly she began to smile again. She talked to a therapist, made it a point, after a couple of months, to go out to eat with Danny and Tucker, like they always had. She would even hang out with Jazz and Valerie, watch movies, do nails, talk about the boys (Sam had Danny, of course, and Tucker and Valerie were slowly starting to become an item, and Jazz had a crush on a boy from her college classes off at Harvard). Even with these victories, even with this steady recovery, though, there was always the sad, broken feeling when she was alone.

It was out of this loneliness that Sam made a very rash decision: she wanted to have a baby.

Danny and Sam had been talking about it for months, maybe even years, at this point. There were worries, troubles. They were getting married, for sure (Sam wore the silly ring he gave her like an engagement ring anyway, so it wasn't like he needed to get her a new one) and they were going to figure everything out after college like where they would live, what they would do. But could they even have children? What kind of mutations had Danny suffered when he got into that ghost portal those few years ago? Even if they could have kids, would they inherit the powers? Would Sam be okay, carrying a baby with ghost genes? And what about all the ectoradiation Sam had been around, as she'd fought alongside Danny. Had that messed with her, too?

Sam had no way to be sure of any of these things, save one. It was just that she needed, she had, to try.

Danny was relatively young for his class, since he was born in April, so when Sam first mentioned it, over Christmas break their Senior year, he spluttered something about only being 17, and why would you want to have a baby right now, and all that.

But what was the problem? She was rich, she had plans, she could get by for a long time without having to work a real job, even if she wanted to. The company would run itself, that's what they had CEOs for. They were young, they were in love, they wanted to get married, and she was 18 (being born in October) and could do what she wanted, dammit, and besides, she was just so lonely most days.

Danny put his foot down round New Years, told her that he didn't want her to do something stupid just because she was alone. It wasn't his fault that there were enemies around, he said, and couldn't be beside her all the time, and came home at odd hours. He was working on it, he said, with the Wardens in the prisons in the Ghost Zone (except Walker, damn that man to hell) trying to get everything reinforced, and besides there's a war going on right now on that side, don't you care?

But no, Sam did not care about the Ghost War, and she did not care about any of the politics Danny was dealing with, and she did not care a bit about college or high school or family or Tucker running for mayor again or anything like that. She just wanted something to hold, because there was no one around to hold her, and was that such a crime?

Unfortunately for Danny, Sam's mind was calculating and clever, and she knew just how to manipulate him to do what she wanted. All it took was a little convincing, the batting of an eyelash, and if all else failed, bribery. And damn her if she didn't know a perfect bribe.

One sad side effect of being away on what amounted to business trips was that Danny was rarely home at night, and during the day he was at school (unless he was called off on an emergency). Longing glances in the hallway showed just how much he missed spending time with her, but aside from conversations at lunch when Tucker got up to get food, they had no time to be alone. Yes, the janitor's closet had occasionally been tempting, but they didn't have class together and Sam wasn't usually one to skip (unless she was also called off on an emergency).

If there was one thing that she knew he missed, it was her body. Yes, yes, the love was there, and she knew that Danny cared for her in an almost obsessive fashion, not desiring that she get hurt in any way, planning on spending the rest of his life with her. And she, too, loved him, loved everything normal and supernatural about the boy, loved the black hair and the white hair, the blue eyes and the green eyes, the warm skin and the cold tongue. But even with all of this, Danny was still a man, and men had needs, just as women had needs. He was being chivalrous, she knew, since her parents had died, and not asking, even tentatively, for so much as a kiss on the cheek. He was going to wait until she sought him out, because he didn't want to confuse her or hurt her or get her into a bad emotional state. She knew this, even though he'd never said it to her.

Since her parents died, they'd not done anything past kissing, holding each other, a few gropes in his sleep that she allowed because they made her feel wanted, and besides, it wasn't like he could control what happened when he wasn't conscious. Sam was fine with this lack of intimacy, because she wasn't sure she could handle more than transient love and intangible emotion. Danny was fine with it because Sam needed him to be, and so he was. He didn't quite understand, of course, why she didn't want him to make her feel better, even in that way, especially since she loved it that way, when she was clearly suffering. But he did know that she needed both space and affection, and he was doing his damndest to do both, when the rest of the world wasn't going to intervene. And now, especially now, because Sam wanted to have a baby, and all of that was bad news. Not that he didn't want to have kids with Sam, but they were still in high school, and college, and all of the other old arguments that popped up again and again, every time Sam begged.

But the longing for something to hold, to hold a piece of herself and himself, was starting to prove too much. Perhaps, Sam thought, it is my broken emotional state. Perhaps I am trying to substitute something old for something new. I don't know. All I know is that this is what I want, with every fiber of my being, and damn the cliche.

She did research, talking to their friends and allies they had made over the years. Could humans and ghosts produce children? Many of them did not know, but pointed her in what was hopefully the right direction. Months and months of sneaking around in the Spectre Speeder, while Danny was doing his diplomatic duty, travelling to ghost libraries and hunting through dusty tomes of mythology and supernatural happenings. Until, finally, there was someone who knew.

"Hi," the blonde boy said as she shook his hand. "My name is Neil. It's nice to finally meet you."

He lived on the South Side of town, past the Nasty Burger and near the old psychiatric hospital. He was her age, perhaps a bit younger, and had been in hiding up until when Danny made his alter ego public information.

"We've been here in secret," he said. "We didn't want to get involved with you three, so we hid out here."

Three of them, another trio like themselves. Two girls, and Neil. Chaiya, Rose. All with powers. All from the area.

How? Well, he wasn't sure. Amity Park was a hotspot for spectral activity. It wasn't a surprise that so many people had experienced mutations. "You know," he said, "There are so many places where the

Ghost Zone comes into our world. It isn't surprising that there are so many of us freaks, when you think about it."

Why? Well, the same reasons as everyone else. Wanting to fit in. Wanting to hide. Needing to carry out their goals in secret. "We've been trying to stay under the radar," he said. "Not like you."

It's amazing, Sam had said, that you all have been under our noses this entire time, just down the street. Helping us from afar, and taking care of the little guys while we've been after the big guns.

They were friends fast, through email in the beginning, more so after their first meeting in person. She'd gotten his name from a friend, from a tip-off, from a rumor.

"Yes, it was my mother," Neil told her, as she sat on his dusty couch, the other girls beside her, taking in the infamous Sam Manson. "She came over through a portal, met my dad. They fell in love, and here I am."

He'd lived between the two dimensions during his childhood, like a child of divorced parents (except that his parents were still madly in love, he told her, shaking his dead head), shuffled from one house to another on weekends and during school vacations, and still he popped back and forth occasionally, though he mostly stayed on this side of the divide. He protected his father, and the school, and everything else, from the few, miniscule threats that had come by before the Fenton Portal had opened, and he protected his mother from getting swept up in the politics. Luckily, when the real influx of enemies had hit, there was another, more public figure to take care of it.

He'd grown up his whole life with powers and being around other people like himself – because, of course, there were always halfas made the old-fashioned way, or through their own freak accidents. Chaiya had inherited a cursed necklace that she couldn't take off. Rose got her powers from a lab accident. The three of them had found each other young and were inseparable now.

"You have to meet Danny," Sam said, when she first met the three. They were in agreement.

But Neil was her only help with the baby situation, and she explained it to him. She, of course, left out the information that she was trying to get pregnant as soon as possible. Sam doubted that he would help her if he knew that.

"You usually don't have to worry about it," he had said. Baby ghosts don't usually show their powers in the womb, his mother had told him, and halfas were supposedly the same way. Humans and humanoid ghosts can breed – it's a genetic mutation, he said. Has to do with radioactivity, chromosomes moving around, and he spouted off some science that she couldn't follow.

Usually a fifty percent chance of having a child with the mutation, he said. Depends on the sex of the baby, where the mutations are. You'd have to get him tested, to see where it is. "But," he said, "Don't have sex with him in his ghost mode if you can avoid it. It does strange things to the baby's powers." She was intrigued, but didn't say anything. She knew what his ghost half was like with her.

"Introduce us to Danny next time you're here," Neil told her, as she was leaving.

She was elated, walking on air as she drove back home to her empty mansion, to her grieving grandmother, to her busy friends. A baby, she thought, elated, a burden off her shoulders. I can still have a baby.

By February, she was blonde, and by April, Sam had been accepted into Northwestern University. Undecided, but she wanted to go into Law Enforcement. Danny hadn't decided yet where he was going, since almost every college he'd applied to wanted him in their program, but he was also looking at Law Enforcement. He wanted to know the human way of fighting crime, and besides, he wasn't any good at science or math, so what did that leave him?

April 3rd was Danny's birthday. Finally 18, finally ready to go out into the world as a real adult. His mother and father had planned a party for that weekend, with all of his friends and relatives. Jazz was even coming home from Harvard to be there (not that it was a feat – Jack Fenton had gadgets that could get to Cambridge and back in a couple of hours) and she was bringing her boyfriend, with good news, she said, and if the whole group wasn't in a tizzy making rumors about it, Sam didn't know what to call it.

But the night of his birthday was a Thursday, and that meant that Sam had him all to herself.

Perhaps, in all of the chaos surrounding college and graduation, Danny had just forgotten about Sam's need for a child. Certainly he hadn't forgotten about her need for space – they still weren't up to functional in terms of their intimate relationship. He didn't want to force Sam to do anything, and she seemingly wasn't up to doing anything herself. This, of course, was all a ruse after she'd made her decision. She just had to save it for a special occasion.

The clock struck twelve midnight, as Sam sat on her bed and waited. He had told her, earlier that day, that he was going to make sure he was home. Take a day off, she had insisted. Lord knows you haven't had any of those in a while. The Wardens could wait, all of them. The war will still be on tomorrow.

Danny phased in through her window (their window, rather, as he almost never slept in his own bed) and landed on the floor as his human self, wearing a familiar look of caution, longing, and fatigue. New, tonight, was the excitement. An adult, he said. I'm an adult.

That's silly, Sam said, the covers wrapped tightly around her. He'd been an adult since he was 14 years old.

Danny chuckled, walked towards her and sat down. Should I ask what you're wearing underneath that blanket?

A laugh. You can read me like a book. The covers dropped to her waist – nothing underneath but too-pale skin and a too-rosy blush. The reaction was delayed slightly – she saw his hand hesitate, watched those blue eyes glance up to her face. How did she feel tonight? Had the hints that she'd been dropping for weeks been lies all along?

Sam kicked off the rest of the covers. Happy birthday, Danny.

Not lies, then. She watched his eyes flash green – want, desire, that obsessive side of him that always came out when he got like this. No asking for permission, no more stuttering. His hand made a fist all but briefly, before it had wrapped around her arm, the other hand in her hair, mouth on her collarbone, knee pushing her bare thighs apart.

The tension in the room made her eyes water – it had been so long, for the both of them, since they'd done anything passionate, anything that involved mouths and hot breaths. The car crash, then the arguments, then the wardens and wars and politics, all in the way before and now gone and forgotten.

Danny, Danny, she breathed. Please. His mouth travelling down her stomach – he looked up to her to ask if it was all right. Yes, Danny, yes.

A hot groan as he heard the desperation in her voice, stifled as he buried himself between her legs. Slow. Careful. Methodical. Oh, she'd almost forgotten what it was like. A little whimper, just what he was looking for from her. Faster. Harder. Rougher. Oh there, just there, please Danny, yes.

Explosion.

She didn't have enough time to process, didn't have enough time to do anything other than breathe before he'd kissed his way back up to her neck, sucked lightly, grabbed at her breasts and pumped against her, rubbing. Inside, let me inside, he was trying to say.

With purpose this time, Danny, Danny, she gasped. Wait, Danny, wait.

The groan this time was one of want and disappointment. What, what is it?

I want you to change back.

He was still for a moment, confused. He looked up at her – the green pulsing and swirling in his blue eyes. Change back to what?

Your ghost form, Danny, change back.

What? He shook his head. I'm cold, I'll make you cold. She'd never asked before. Maybe he knew he would lose control.

No, no, please, I want you to change. I want to know what it's like, please. She wanted to know how the hair felt, how it would be like with him so cold against her so warm, how it would be like if she let the green swirls take over completely. They'd never done it like that, never done more than just share heated kisses on the battlefield. Please, Danny. It was all she could say. Please, Danny.

A moment of hesitation, a bright light, and a sudden draft. Her shiver, her little squeak of surprise from the cold. All green, now. Hypnotizing. Her breath came out as mist, she instinctively pulled him in.

She whispered, Yes. That was what did it. He made a noise like a growl, wrenched her hips up, no more hesitation, inside, inside and pumping.

His hair was coarse.

Fuck, he said, and that was it for her. She was gone again, but he was still moving into her quivering body. She couldn't breathe, it was too much, too much mist in the air and the sweat was cold, too cold, beautifully cold.

She stammered, stuttered. It was like he was a different man. Gone was gentle human, here was impassioned ghost. And how much lovelier he looked atop her, so much more handsome than with black and blue.

It had never been like this before, for them. Sam could still read his body like a book – she'd never seen him enjoy it this much, never seen him when he wasn't fighting to stay in control. The control was gone. He looked down at her with only glimmers of love and concern in his eyes, like the obsession within him had overwritten everything else.

Danny, she said. Please. Come inside me, please.

A rumble, a groan, a forced shake of the head. She was winning him over, she could tell.

I want to know what it's like, please! An extra hard thrust, a punctuated rejection. She gasped, her head dropped back, she could not keep it up anymore but this was her only chance.

She grabbed him by the back of the head, wrenched him down to look at her. I'm begging you, she whispered.

Sam didn't know what did it that time. Maybe it was the plea. Maybe it was the rough handling (he loved when she grabbed his hair when he was inside of her, it made him quake). Maybe it was the fact that he had complete dominion over her and that he'd finally let go of the restraint.

He clenched his fists on the sheets, S-Sam, one last jab, and she'd won. Danny bit his lip, like he always did, Sam sighed like she always did, and then he was on top of her, black hair and blue eyes and skin suddenly hot as the burning sun.

It was the next day that she introduced him to the three other hybrids, but she was only half-listening as they swapped stories and filled in the large gaps in each other's knowledge.

A baby, she thought. I'm going to have a baby.


	2. Chaiya

I lost my mother when I was seven years old to ovarian cancer. My sister was five. My parents were divorced by the time I was three and my dad lives on the other side of the country. At one point I had a grandmother, but she died when I was thirteen, just because she had the bad luck of being old and I had the bad luck of being young and an orphan.

When I was eleven, one of the popular girls found a trinket at a fair and thought it would be a good idea to force me to wear it. They said it was ugly, so it would fit me perfectly. They didn't like me, I think, because it was easy to pick on a girl with no parents. No one to back you up, you know? No one to go to the principal to complain.

I like to fight, but I didn't want to do it much back then. People without parents don't have a lot of ways to get home from detention without the bus.

Maybe I should have tried harder to get them off my case.

It was a pendant, with a silver chain and a drop-shaped glass on the end with a strange green light inside. I don't know how the girl got it – maybe it dropped onto the merchant's table through a random portal to the Ghost Zone. I don't know why she chose to wait to put it onto me without trying it on herself. But she did.

She and her friends forced it around my neck, maybe because I let them. It was really painful after that, and I'm not exactly sure what happened. The other girls screamed, because I screamed. I remember a bright green light, and I remember that it felt like something had cut my neck open over and over and over. It probably only lasted about a minute, and then the pain went down into my chest, and I cried and cried, and it was done.

People had run away while this was happening, which was good. I was just about alone when I woke up. I think must have I passed out until after the pain stopped.

The first thing I tried to do was take the necklace off, of course. And wouldn't you know, it just wouldn't budge. I didn't know what to do. I pulled harder, and suddenly the pain in my chest was back, like I was pulling something straight up.

The table at the fair had a little mirror on it, so I took a look. The necklace had wound its way into my neck, and was actually going into the skin. I pulled on it – there was no bleeding, no injury. I suppose it just phased itself in, the stupid cursed necklace. I didn't know this at the time. I was too busy panicking.

I almost died, trying to get the necklace out. Turns out that the chain had wound itself around my heart. Yeah, cliché, I know.

It's still there.

I don't remember how Neil got to be my friend, but somehow he knew I was missing, and that first time I almost died, pulling my heart out through my throat, he found me.

Neil knows a lot of things about ghosts and ghost powers and such, even at age eleven. He saw the necklace on my neck and freaked out. I don't think he knew the swears that he would have wanted to use.

"You'll never get it off," he said, once he got me home and his mom and dad looked at it. "If you try, you'll die." Neil never was one for mincing words, even back then.

I wasn't exactly unfamiliar with death, but it never felt that real before as when I felt the chain squeezing my heart.

When I got older, and I got curious, I did some research on the necklace. Apparently, some sorceress in olden times had fallen in love with a prince, or something, but he rejected her for a fair maiden. Some fairy tale nonsense, because they always fall for fair maidens. Anyway, the sorceress killed the maiden and turned her into the necklace, or maybe put her into the necklace, or her ghost started haunting the necklace. I'm not sure. That's the legend, anyway. It's probably false, but the necklace does seem to have some sort of entity inside it, because it almost speaks to me sometimes, as it pulses around my neck. I think that it disagrees with me now and again, because it will send jolts through the chain, make me jump. It'll even glow more when I'm angry, sad. Changes color with my emotions, but I don't notice it anymore, and now I've learned to put it under my shirt so that no one can tell if I'm mad or where I am in the dark.

I guess I should be happy that I have this necklace, anyway, because if I didn't I wouldn't have my powers.

I mean, they're pretty basic powers, so far. Flight, invisibility. My guess is that all the time I spent with a radioactive jewel around my neck mutated me, or something. Whatever. It's a part of me now, and I've accepted that fact, so I just deal with it, learn to use better techniques, help out Rose and Neil.

I'm glad those two are around, because if they weren't, I don't know what I'd do with my life. Rose just sort of showed up at our door one day, when my grandmother was still alive, asking to be taken in. We think she ran away from home, but no one could pry the information out of her, so we let it be. All she would tell us was that she was from Alabama, and that she didn't have parents anymore, and she would do chores if she could just stay here.

My Gramma was a very nice, caring woman, and I like to think that she still is, wherever she ended up after she died. She let Rose stay, and she's been with me ever since, at my side. We even help take care of my little sister, Jen, since we're alone now.

Then, of course, Gramma died, and I didn't have anywhere to go, so Neil's family took us in. He just lives with his dad right now. His mom was sort of a secret for a while. We got older, though, the three of us in the one house, and Neil finally told us. We were probably around nine years old, and wow! Our best friend had superpowers! That was so cool!

And then, a few years later, Rose finally confessed that she had powers too. Her parents were scientists, she'd been in a lab accident, something something giant vat of radioactive ectoplasm. She didn't know, though, that they were going to show up, until she hit puberty. Then, BAM. All of a sudden, one morning, she woke up sleeping on the ceiling.

I'll have to admit, I was a little jealous that both of my best friends could do cool things, like turn intangible and shoot lasers from their hands. If I could change everything, though, I would never have put that necklace on, because all it did was cause me trouble. It hasn't been worth it, so far.

Neil's dad is nice, and his mom is really caring and doting when she's not hiding from the neighbors, so I like living with them. Our little trio and my sister feel like a family, you know? I consider Rose a sister, and Neil... Well... I guess it isn't a secret that I like him. Everyone knows but him. Well, everyone has TOLD me that they know, but him. He probably does know, because I think he likes me too. Actually, I know he does. He's just a little too shy to admit it. But me? I'm not shy, and hopefully that kiss I planted on him yesterday after dinner will prove it.

I'm 16 years old, and I could die any day, is what I think. I don't have the opportunity to wait around for a stupid boy to say something. I have a job, right now, fighting supernatural creatures that are constantly out to get me, my friends, my family. I'm glad that Danny Phantom is around to help us. He's nice, I've met him at school a couple of times. I worked with him once in biology.

And don't ask me how I know who he is. Come on. It wasn't hard to figure it out. If I was going to give the credit to someone, actually, it would be Rose. She took one look at him and told us on the spot. "That kid's got ghost powers," she said. We were on the bus – Danny's a year older than us, so we were in the 8th grade when he got them as a freshman, but the same bus serves both the middle and high school. He walked past us, all nervous, one day, because high schoolers sit in the back, and boom.

I still don't know how she knew. Rose knows a lot of strange things, though. I've stopped questioning it. It's just what Rose does. Besides, we all made sure to study Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom's faces and it is so obvious that they are the same.

Pretty soon I'll be out of this school, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my life. Danny and his gang are all graduating in a few months, and here I am, still sixteen. Stupid June birthday. But you shouldn't have to decide on the rest of your life when you're this young, especially since I have no idea whether I even want to reveal my secret identity to the world. Not that it's much of a secret, since Danny's out. Either I stop hanging out with him completely (because, you know, two similar looking people hanging around Danny Fenton and Phantom? People will suspect) or everyone finds out about me, Rose, and Neil. I don't think that I would mind if it were the latter. It's not like I have a family to worry about, other than Jen, and between the six of us hybrids, I think that we can take care of her. I've taught her how to shoot an ectogun, anyway. She carries it all the time. She just started high school, too, so I made sure that she can take care of herself.

I think that I want to be a personal trainer, or something. You know, for people at the gym. I like working out and I like fighting ghosts, now that I don't have to worry about this stupid necklace killing me. It's good stress relief, but I get kind of numb to things after I shoot a ghost off into oblivion.

Neil came up to me today, after I kissed him. He was confused and rubbing the back of his head. He only does that when he wants to say something important, or a few somethings. Me? Well, I was scared, you know? He may have kissed me back yesterday, but that could just have easily have been a knee-jerk reaction.

It turned out that it was two important somethings.

"What?" I asked him. He looked just a little bit too sheepish to be talking about... us.

"Sam's pregnant."

I don't exactly remember what I was doing at the time, but I do know that it stopped really quickly. "WHAT?!"

"Yeaaah... I think it's my fault."

For a split second, I wondered if he'd been sleeping with her behind my back... or, rather, behind Danny's back... but he didn't look nearly guilty enough for that, and Neil was too nice to not feel horrendous about sleeping with another man's girlfriend.

Neil sat down on the couch. We were in the living room. I was probably just reading, or something. I didn't say anything to him. I wanted an explanation first.

"She was asking me about if ghosts and humans could have babies, and could ectoradiation make you infertile, and... I don't know." A sigh. "I guess I put the idea in her head?"

Ugh. That stupid girl, letting her uterus do the talking. "She came to you right?" He nodded. I settled back into the couch cushions. "She already wanted the baby."

"She did?" God. That look of surprise on his face was so cute. "Oh."

I smiled at him. Aww, he was so clueless sometimes. Naïve, and always thinking that things were his fault. It's part of the reason why I liked him, even if it was annoying from time to time.

"But really, though," he continued, with a shake of his head. "She's pregnant. She's having a baby. Graduation is weeks away, and she's having a baby."

I guess out of all of us, Sam would be the one best suited to having a baby. She was rich, she was smart, she was dedicated. But in these times? I can't imagine bringing a baby into the world when your boyfriend has ghost powers and is being attacked all the time. There could be assassins, soldiers, convicts, all sorts of things. And there was a war going on! And college... didn't she worry about any of this stuff? "She's probably freaking out," I said, finally. She had to be, right? That crazy woman.

"I know I am." Another head shake. "I would never want to have kids." Then, quickly, "I mean, not this soon." Oh. Did he see my face fall, just then? Oops. I must not have recovered fast enough.

Awkward silence.

"Chaiya," he said, but then seemed to decide against whatever it is. Of course, that wasn't going to fly with me.

"What?" No response from that one. Ugh, boys. "Neil, what is it?" Still nothing. I slid closer to him on the couch. "NEIL. Talk to me, please!"

I have a bad habit when I'm comfortable with a guy, and by comfortable I mean flirting with a guy, that whenever he does something that annoys me, my first instinct is to take a swing at him. I don't know why. Maybe I spent too much time hanging out with boys as a little kid. Unfortunately, though, because Neil is the guy I'm closest to, I take swings at him a lot. We've talked about it, over the years, and he knows I don't mean much by it, and he knows that I won't actually hurt him on purpose, and besides, I can rarely hurt him anyways, with his reflexes and durability. But, fortunately, Neil's first response is either to not react at all, or get me to stop.

Today, he decided to stop my arm headed toward his shoulder by grabbing my wrist. Now, my first instinct when a wrist is grabbed is to use the other hand to go for the other shoulder, and when I swung at him again, I found myself nice and trapped. In his arms. Three inches away from his face.

Now, given that I had kissed him out of the blue the day before, Neil's first response was to turn a very lovely shade of red. I love when he blushes like that, and I probably would have smiled, or something, but I was suddenly very distracted by how Neil's upper lip was so full looking, and a little bit chapped, and how his blue eyes were suddenly wide, with dilated pupils that meant that he liked what he saw, and how he'd started to breathe like he'd taken a jog up the street, and how my heart was, all of a sudden, beating fast.

"Neil," I murmured, like some shy little schoolgirl. "Tell me what it is."

He didn't hesitate, this time, which surprised me. "I want to kiss you again."

And if I said that didn't make my heart flutter in my chest, I'd be lying. Neil bit his lip, and I don't know exactly what came over me, or came over him, but the romance was gone, and all of a sudden he'd pushed me back against the couch and had tightened his grip on my wrists and was kissing me like it was his last day on earth. And I was kissing him back, and trying to get my hands loose so that I could wrap them around his shoulders or fist them in his hair or slide one underneath his shirt. Or his jeans. Or something, anything. I just wanted to touch him, but the more I struggled, the more he pinned me down.

It was almost frightening, how intent he was on not letting me get away from him, except that when he broke our kiss long enough to catch a breath, I saw the look in his eyes. He was excited, that was for sure, but concerned and a little scared. I think he must have been scared of himself, of how he was reacting. I knew that he'd had girlfriends in the past, but I also knew that they'd never been passionate. I could look at him with his little flings and there was no feeling between them. No love, no care, none of the sexual tension that clouded the air between him and me.

And if he was experiencing the same thing I was, where there was some strange part of him that was rising up, yelling at you to do more, to go further, to stake a claim on what was yours, then I knew why he could have been scared. I knew this part of me, strange as it was. It was the part of me that came out of the necklace – the ghost part. And Neil, being half ghost himself? He was probably getting yelled at by all of his ghost instincts to mark, mark, mark. Because mine? They were saying, Chaiya, let him take you, let him mark you forever, let him be with you. You can have him, like you'd always wanted.

I'd talked to Neil's parents a few times, especially Neil's mom, the ghost. After Rose and I had our powers manifest, she sat us down in her kitchen with some hot chocolate to explain some facts of life.

Ghosts have an obsession, she said, that they wanted with every fiber of their being. It wasn't so bad, she said, for people who were only part ghost. But haven't you felt it? Haven't you felt the need, when you were in your ghost form, to have your one thing and hold it tightly and protect it with all you had? And, she said, didn't you feel more confident about having that one thing? More able to act on everything you were feeling? Did it scare you? Did it make you want to become human again, to get away from those strong urges?

I understood what she meant perfectly. And now, there was nothing but an urge to change, change, change into my ghost form and listen to it, and have it walk me through everything that was happening.

"Do you feel that?" I whispered to Neil, against his lips. He pulled away from me, confused, conflicted.

"The need to take you?"

I never thought that those words would come out of his mouth, and I was surprised at how badly they made me want to go ahead with... this. All of this. I swallowed, because it was either that or let out some strange moaning noise that was bubbling in my throat. "Yeah."

Neil took a deep breath, and with what looked like great effort, removed his hands from my wrists. "Yeah, I feel it." He shrunk back, which displeased me greatly. "We should stop."

"No!" It had come out before I had even realized it was there, and I was propping myself up with my newly freed hands, trying to get his body warmth back.

There was a strange look in his eye, one that was unfamiliar, intense, smouldering. "We have to stop. It will ruin everything, and if you don't get away from me... " Another one of those deep breaths. "I'm not going to be able to make the urge go away, Chaiya. I'm going to listen to it, and you might not want me to do that."

Was this it? Was this what I had been waiting for, this whole time? Well, I had kissed him earlier, and he'd kissed me today, and the ball was in my court. What did I want? What was smart? Well, I wanted Neil, and I'd wanted him almost my entire life, and I was sixteen, dammit, and that was old enough, wasn't it? And he was seventeen, now, just barely, and didn't we already plan on spending our lives together? Before now, admittedly, that had only been a platonic sentiment, and now it was looking like... more.

I took a shaky breath. Was I going to be okay with this, if it went as far as my body wanted it to go?

"Neil," I said, and I tried to cover up the nerves that had suddenly found their home in my stomach. "I want you to do whatever you want to me."

He stared at me for a moment, and I wasn't sure if he'd heard me. I was about to ask when he whispered, "Are you sure about that?"

"Yes."

That was all he needed, and he clearly let his human rational thought fly out the window, because I saw his eyes flash red and his skin started to crackle and he was kissing me, and both of my wrists were in one of his hands above my head, and his fingers had closed over the back of my neck, and he was kissing me, and I forgot that I wasn't supposed to give into my ghost side, and the voice said change, change, change, because he had, and then his hand on my neck was cold as death, and the change just burst out of me, and his hand was warm again, because we were cold together.

There were some things that I'd always assumed about my first time. For starters, it would be calm and romantic, and a lot of talking, and soft kisses and a little bit of pain followed by intense pleasure, and the way that it was in the movies and the books. It would be in a nice, comfortable, clean bed, with soft sheets and warm comforters, where we were the only ones who were home and I would be with someone that I was dating, and had been dating for a while, and that I loved them with all of my heart and wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with them.

It turned out that none of this was true, except that I loved Neil so much that it hurt. I mean, I wasn't even human the first time that I had sex. And after I changed into my ghost form, there was nothing left telling me that I had to stop, only instinct telling me that I had to keep going, keep going or die. There were no candles and no nice words and no bed. There was an empty soda can on the side table, and hot breathing, and some groans, and first a couch, and then later on, one of us, maybe both of us, couldn't stop ourselves from floating and we somehow ended up on the ceiling, half-clothed and throwing jeans and shirts every which way, both knowing very well that Rose was downstairs in the basement, working on an essay, and we hadn't even admitted to each other that we liked each other yet.

There was pain, though, even though Neil told me that I was the wettest that he'd ever felt a girl, and that it should make it easier for me, even after he'd spent longer than I can handle working me over with his mouth, and I'd never had an orgasm like that before, and he'd moved his head away and I'd rubbed my legs together, missing him, and they were wet and warm, and he smiled up at me like a predator, and I called him a smug son of a bitch, because I had to say something that was more coherent then "Ah..." and "Oh..." and "Neil! Neil!" and because I had phased my arm through the ceiling fan by accident. And he drove into me on a groan, and I cried, because it was painful, and stretchy, and he said sorry, sorry, and it was then that I found out that he wasn't a virgin because I didn't think a virgin could be so smooth and know just what to do to a girl when he was inside her, and the tears dried on my face as I buried my head into his shoulder and sunk my teeth into his collarbone because it was all too much, too fast, too soon and my head was spinning and the floor was so far away and I wouldn't have traded a moment of it.

We left sweat stains on the white ceiling.

It was easier, actually, to phase through said ceiling to get to his bed, rather than float back down to the couch, and either way, after it was done, we both needed to rest.

"What are we, now?" I asked him, as we lay naked and sticky, over the covers, a cool May breeze through the open window.

He looked at me, an awkward smile on his face. "I mean, I guess you know how I feel about you, now."

I had to laugh at that. "No, really? I thought that I was just a fling."

That's the nice thing about Neil. He's easy to laugh with. Everything is familiar and comfortable, even when we are doing new things. Like what just happened, because that was definitely new. Not that I was going to complain about it.

Neil's face suddenly got serious, like he was thinking hard about something, and then he rolled over to look at me. "Chaiya, in case you couldn't tell from that whole... thing... "

"It was an experience, for sure."

He shook his head, smiling. "But, well... I'm crazy about you." He brushed away some of the hair that was stuck to my forehead. "I want to be with you... forever, if possible."

I'm sure that I'd turned a nice shade of red at this point, but it didn't matter all too much, because I was smiling so hard that I thought my cheeks might crack. "So? Are we dating now?" Please say yes, please say yes...

"Absolutely," he grinned, and he kissed me. I might have melted, I'm not sure. It's the same feeling as when you accidentally phase into someone.

We got lucky, because I was on birth control, so nothing happened, which was good. Neil told me, later that day, when the two of us had stopped fooling around and calmed down, that oh god, if I got pregnant, it would end up a ghost by default, not a halfa, and how could he have been so stupid to have forgotten that his mom told him not to have sex with a ghost in ghost mode, because that's how you condemned your children to a life of hiding away from the world, and it was bad enough already that we had, like, a 25 percent chance of conceiving a ghost child even as humans, and I didn't really follow all of the babble.

I think that he was a little overly worried, but it all turned out all right in the end. I mean, there were a few ups and downs, but hey, at least only one of the couples in our friend group was pregnant, right?

Well... for now, at least.


	3. Crystal

In the fall of 1974, Crystal turned seventeen, but she wouldn't turn eighteen until summer, 2007. At least, not officially. It was hard to count the years when you were dead.

She mused to herself often, when she was in that sort of a musing mood, that it was amazing, truly, that her body had been preserved for almost thirty years, buried underneath piles of ash and blocks of ice that she suspected were ghostly in origin, as ghostly as the fire was that had killed her.

Her and Jack and Ted, all those years ago, in turbulent times. Nixon's resignation and People magazine and all the tension from the Vietnam war, but still with enough time for her to focus on her dream – rock and roll and fame and stardom, and looking up to Freddie Mercury and Joni Mitchell and Eric Clapton and everyone else.

And Jack with the accident that changed everything, and all of a sudden he had ghost powers and fought to use them all through school, and her and Ted trying to hide him from all of the paranoia, and even with everything else, he still remembered her birthday.

The guitar was beautiful. Purple and blue, her favorite colors, with all sorts of decorations on it. She strummed it and loved it, brandished it around yelling her favorite curses, Fuck the Police, and Reject Adult Authority, and all that. Because even at seventeen, she wasn't willing to be an adult. All she wanted was to sing, and play her guitar, and grow old and be fantastic.

And it was the 1970s, and she smoked a lot, and drank a lot, and got into trouble when Jack and Ted had to take her home, but a lot of people were like that, and she still managed to pass with decent grades.

But if there was one thing that she loved the most, it wasn't her guitar. It was the man who gave it to her. Jack.

Even with his strange powers, even with his wise-cracking jokes and his immature sense of humor, he was her best friend, and she'd been in love with him for years. They fought together, kept all of the ghosts away, even when there was no ghost portal to put them in. It was easier, back then, to dress strange and have your hair and eyes be weird colors and walk around beating people up late at night, and plenty of people were doped up on all kinds of things, so it was easy to write off glowing and shape-shifting as strange drug-induced hallucinations.

Unfortunately, though, some of their enemies were smart enough to figure out how to get back to town after they'd been taken care of, and Desman was one of them. He was, by far, the most dangerous of their enemies, and Jack had called him a nemesis once, before Crystal had told him that it was lame to call someone a nemesis.

When your enemy could shape-shift into any form he wanted, you got used to looking at suspicious objects twice, and making sure you could verify someone's identity before they could sneak up behind you. After a few attempts, Desman was probably sick of being attacked before he'd even changed out of his disguise.

Crystal was unsuspecting, this time. Why would she think to check the identity of the person who was supposed to be meeting her at the movies later? The note that he'd left was cute and she hadn't let go of it since it appeared on her bed that night.

So she waited.

And waited.

Hours passed and the people filed into the theater, and out again, and in, and there was no sign of him. She thought, maybe he got stuck with a ghost, hung out near the payphone in case he miraculously called it, and shivered in the September air.

She waited until the theater closed, two in the morning, and then, all she could do was worry and race home, try to call his house, call Ted, call anyone.

Jack didn't pick up. His mother answered the phone, gasped. Crystal, is that you? Jack hasn't come home. Have you seen him? I'm worried sick.

Ted was the same story. No sign since that evening, when he left after dinner without saying a word.

And then two weeks went by, and there was no sign of either of them, and Crystal was a nervous wreck by the end, looking around all the corners she could and opening lockers trying to find someone, something, that knew where they went.

The worst part, though, was that no one else around her, no one at school, ever even noticed. The only people who seemed to remember that they had even existed were her and their parents. She stayed up late, stopped doing what little homework she would have done otherwise, drank enough coffee to kill brain cells and didn't stop searching.

The only thing she had left was the guitar, and she kept it in a bag on her back at all times, protecting it as best she could.

Then, one day, all she could do was sleep, because she'd been awake probably for four days without so much as closing her eyes, and just like that, her house was up in flames and her parents were screaming at her to get out, get out, we don't know how but the gas line ignited, Crystal!

Crystal woke up as a ghost. Didn't even feel the pain, because the smoke knocked her out before she could have realized that there was a fire. And she woke up, and all she could hear and remember was Desman, laughing.

The first few days, she tried so very hard to find her way back home, check up on her parents, see what had happened to her house and her other friends. Unfortunately, though, this was almost a decade before the first artificial ghost portal would be built, as unsuccessful as it would be. Nearly three decades before she could actually get back to the real world with certainty.

Once in a while, she found ways to get in, though. Random openings and closings and rifts in the dimensions and all that. It was probably every couple of years or so, that she could get back to reality. Those were the times that she realized what sort of power she had over people. Jack's guitar had come with her, and she had some strange sway over it, so that whatever she wanted to do with it, was done. She could make people fall in love, especially with her, because it so pleased her to hear the masses chant her name when she played. She could break things, and burn things, and teleport, and had all kinds of tricks up her sleeves. She was more powerful the more she was loved, but unfortunately there were always people to send her back.

She never did find Jack, as far as she knew. And Ted? Well, he was dead, for sure. Jack at least had a chance to still be out there, as a ghost, or something. Ted, not so much.

The four wardens were always on her case, especially the female warden, Shiva, and she ended up in her all-woman prison a few times. Never for long, though, because her and Shiva had an understanding, somehow, and she was just doing her job, and they weren't really enemies. She was the kind of ghost that Ember (because she'd left Crystal behind, now) would want to play cards with, or have drinks with. Maybe someday, Shiva would say, when you decide to stop crossing between the worlds.

And the years passed, and slowly she began to change, and learn, and she almost gave up on ever finding Jack, instead cursing him for leaving her alone, wherever he might be, and not bothering to find her.

Then, the day came where she learned his secret.

He'd ended up in the Ghost Zone, and it had taken him ages to get back to the human realm, and when he tried to hunt her and Ted down, all he found were the tombstones.

Jack had chased Desman throughout the Ghost Zone, knowing that his two best friends were dead, swearing only revenge on the enemy that had ruined his life and happiness. It was just what Desman wanted, of course. When the wardens finally came to track the two of them down for their mayhem and destruction, Desman had sealed Jack into one of the warden's bodies, choosing that of the dragon, Gildemeir, seemingly forever.

The other three wardens proceeded to lock Desman up in the highest security prison they had, and there he was, to rot, for what they hoped was the rest of his afterlife.

Jack, though, was stuck, and try as the wardens might, they could not get him out. He and Gil shared a body, and Jack, depressed, chose to retreat into the confines of his host's subconscious.

That was, at least, until Ember McLain turned up in Walker's prison for the first time. Seemed like helping Danny Phantom save the world was only good for so much redemption, and she was caught messing with Danny (it was almost a game at this point, she had nothing against the kid) and unceremoniously dumped back home via thermos. Walker picked her up and threw her in the slammer, and honestly, she didn't notice the scaly dragon prowling around her cell at night. She was a little busy plotting her escape.

When Ember decided to pay another visit to Amity Park, to visit her tombstone, as she had the urge to do every once in a while, she was surprised to find that same dragon standing in front of the grave, with some flowers.

Her first response, of course, was to be on the defensive. Why was he here? How did he know Crystal McLain? Had he figured out who she was? Was he going to capture her and take her back to his prison? Lord knew she'd been in three out of the four. Did he want to make the number even?

Who are you and why are you here?

Hi Crystal.

She blinked, stepped back, automatically raised her guitar to fight. How do you know who I am?

The dragon sighed, put the flowers down on her grave. How could I not? His voice sounded different, familiar. I'm the one who gave you that guitar.

A gasp, another step back, stumbling, tripping over a gravestone and falling in the dirt.

Jack? She said, not even making an attempt to get up.

It was strange to see the dragon try to attempt Jack's signature smile, especially since it was a much sadder smile. Hey. Nice to see you again. Yes, that was definitely his voice, coming out of such an unexpected mouth.

For a moment, she didn't know what to think or how she felt. Then, all of a sudden, all that she could sense burning inside of her was anger. The wind whistled around her as she floated up into the air, hair roaring. Where have you been?! Why didn't you let me know you were okay?!

Clearly, this wasn't what he had been expecting. Oh, I'm sorry, I was a little busy being stuck inside a dragon, and chasing down my arch nemesis, and trying not to get myself killed again!

You left me all alone! You and Ted both. She choked on her words, looked away, hugged her guitar to her chest like it would make her feel better. And you didn't even try to find me.

No! No. He rushed over to her – she could see the old mannerisms coming out, even behind the scales and claws. With more care than she thought a dragon could muster, he held her hands. Ever so gentle. I've been trying to find you for years. I thought...

Thought what?

I thought you hadn't ended up as a ghost. That you had moved on. He lowered his head, averted his eyes from hers for a moment. I've been visiting your grave since they put it here. Since I found out about Desman's fire.

With much venom, she glared at him, spat her words. And you didn't hear about all the times I ended up in Shiva's prison? In Walker's?

A sigh. I've been letting Gil – this dragon, I mean – run the body. It didn't seem worth it to try to function anymore. I've just been... here. He gestured to the air. Being a nothing, a no one, just some part of his brain. I don't even know. Half the time I don't even remember who I am, just that I'm a part of something else.

There was a long silence between them. He didn't seem to want to spook her anymore, or maybe talking about his non-existence was too uncomfortable. She, certainly, didn't want to say anything, because all she could feel was anger, and hurt, and a little bit of betrayal, as unfair as that might be.

I just want my body back, she said.

Yeah, he replied, looking up at her sadly. Me too.

You have a chance, at least. Her fingers tightened on the frets of her guitar. My body is probably destroyed.

They never found it, after the fire, he said. Maybe it was just the heat that killed you. You're not scarred or burned, are you?

Without thinking, without remembering that there was thirty years of time between the two of them to change, Ember bent down and touched the her jeans, turning them invisible. She couldn't see his face, but she heard the hissing sound he made when he saw it. All the way down, from her toes up to her inner thigh, a whole line of mottled, puckered skin. Pink, or it would have been, if her skin wasn't blue.

Third degree burns, she said, as she returned to being fully clothed. They were probably all over my body, but they only manifested here.

More silence between the two of them. God, Jack said, through his dragon teeth.

Yeah.

Well, he said with a shrug, they never found your body. Who knows where it ended up.

She blinked. You mean, it's not buried here?

A shake of his great scaly head. Your house burned to the ground. Nothing but ash left. They tried to sift through it to find you, but no dice. You were just gone.

She sat on her own gravestone – it would have been more surreal, but, well, she'd been a ghost for a while. Would it still be there?

Who knows. He turned and walked towards a nearby willow tree. Maybe someone took it.

Ember shot up on a gasp and a glare. Desman. Desman has my body.

That's impossible, Jack, or rather Gil, shot back, his voice changing to match. Desman has been locked up in my prison for years.

No, it's not impossible, she spat, furious, excited. He had a lair, didn't he? He could have taken my body as a... She cringed and clutched her guitar. He could have taken me as a trophy. To prove that he'd finally won.

She felt nauseous, needed to sit down, but the ground seemed to have betrayed her for never telling her its secrets. She floated a few inches above it, not wanting to fall over or pass out. I have to get it.

That's crazy, Jack shouted, slicing his claw through the air dismissively. We raided his hideout decades ago. There isn't anything left but dust. He said this like he was proud, proud that he'd finally got the man who'd made his life a living... or dying... hell.

I have to get it, Ember repeated. It's my only chance. Don't you see?! She dropped the guitar (only the strap saved it from crashing on the ground) and grabbed his shoulders and shook him as only a woman could shake a man. Ted's gone. You're stuck in a dragon. But, if Desman took my body, which I know that he did, I can get back. I can come back to life.

Okay. It's not the situation. You're crazy. He brushed her off, surprisingly gentle. All you're going to do is run around a deserted cave and disappoint yourself.

Don't you get it, Jack?! She stalked off a ways. I would think you'd understand most. If you had a chance, even the smallest, most improbable chance, of getting out of that dragon's body, wouldn't you take it? No matter how crazy it seemed?

She floated up to him, and some of her old personality showed through the ghost rage. Softly, sadly, she said, Wouldn't you want to be human again?

His face was impassive, but if she knew Jack at all, if he hadn't really changed these past thirty years, she knew that she'd gotten to him.

Well go, then, he said, bitter. Go chase your improbable chance. Just leave me out of it. He turned, started to walk out of the graveyard.

You won't come with me?

The shadow of the lumbering dragon stopped, and he turned to look at her, the moonlight reflecting off of his eyes, making him look deadly and nothing like the boy she'd once knew. I'm done chasing the past, he said. And then, he was gone, vanished into ectoplasmic smoke.

Ember stood there for a few moments, not sure how to react. Then, she picked herself up, dusted herself off, cleaned a bit of the dirt and mud off of her precious guitar. Precious, now, because it was all that she had left of her human life. Once, she'd treasured it just because it had been his gift.

She scurried along through the Ghost Zone, visiting the familiar places she'd been over the years, until, finally, she reached Desman's cave.

Jack was right in saying that it would have only dust in it. She walked around, touching the walls, looking at the smashed furniture and burned papers and all of the remnants of his evildoing. Some of the trinkets she found in the rubble were those that she recognized. A locket he'd stolen. A pendant. Faded newspaper prints of her and Jack and Ted getting caught on camera by drunk paparazzi. Things from her past life, things that caused her stomach to clench up when she touched them, wiped the dust off of them.

There was something tugging at her, though. She could feel it in every fiber of her being. Her hunch was right. Desman had kept her body, and it was somewhere in here.

A shadow caught the light from behind her, and, not one to be surprised, she whipped around, guitar at the ready, only to find a large dragon, looking sheepish.

Jack!

Hi.

Without thinking, without even considering that he was a dragon and she was dead and that they'd been apart for thirty years, which seemed to be a recurring theme in their relationship, she rushed at him and hugged her arms around his neck, like she'd always wanted to do. You came.

I couldn't leave you.

She laughed. This feels like something out of a bad movie.

His chuckle was comforting. Yeah.

She slid off of him, serious, turned towards the back of the cave. It's here, she said. I can feel it. It's calling me.

Follow it, he said. Listen to it, and walk toward it.

She set off with purpose, directly for the back of the cave. The gloom was almost unbearable, but she just had to keep going. There was only one chance, one way. She had to get her body back.

They reached the back wall of the cave. Jack looked confused, or maybe that was his dragon host coming out.

I don't see anything, he said, pressing on the rock.

But Ember wasn't to be deterred. It's here, I know it. She kneeled, touching her hand to where the wall met the dirt floor. Right here. Beneath us.

Leave this to me, Jack said, brandishing his claws. One benefit of being in a dragon body, is being able to dig like a dragon.

Ember would have laughed, if it wasn't such a serious matter. Yes, it was almost time. She would know, soon, whether or not it was even possible. Could they knit back together, her and her body? If they could, would she go back to being a normal human?

Jack, or rather Gil, dove for the ground, tearing up the mud and stone like it was wet paper, flinging everywhere, nothing but a machine. She watched, directed a bit. To your left, a little more, yes, now straight down, around that big rock, and…

STOP.

It was like she'd hit pause. He shrunk back immediately, not even hesitating, not questioning her.

She pointed, with a shaky finger. Look, she said.

It was radiating cold, covered in black soot. Exposed to the air, steam was coming off of it. The corner of a block of ice, glowing slightly with ectoradiation and mixed with black ash.

And in that corner, retreating back into the secrets of the dirt, was, unmistakably, a lock of flowing red hair.

Her throat closed up and tears stung her eyes and she almost cried, except that Jack was there, and he was oh so carefully digging up the rest of the block and there she was, her body, third degree burns all down her side, matching the one she had sported on her ghostly form all these years, burned but intact, and her clothes burned off completely, and her hair with blood and soot in it.

It's me, she said, touching the ice block.

It's you, Jack whispered, almost in disbelief.

The moment for waiting was over. Get me out, she demanded. Melt it. Do something. I have to get back into my body.

Another benefit to being a dragon, Jack quipped with a grin. Fire breath. An inhale, and suddenly a stream of flames, melting the ice much more slowly than she would have liked.

Ember was standing behind Jack, sheltered from the heat, but even still, she could swear that she felt herself getting warmer. It's taking too long, she growled, picking up her guitar. With a flick of a switch and a strum, the songstress let off a fiery whirlwind, engulfing the rest of the block. Yes, definitely warm now. Her skin felt almost like it was crackling.

Stop, Crystal, stop! Jack shouted. If we melt her all the way –

If we melt ME all the way, she insisted.

You could die from the burn wounds, he said. We need to get you somewhere where you can wake up and go to a hospital. Not here, in a cave.

But she was impatient, and she didn't stop. I don't care, I don't care, she screamed. The fire died. There was a slight smell of burning hair. Too much, it had to be now. She flung her guitar across the room, dove at the pitiful, grey, shriveled body on the floor, intangible.

She didn't remember much of what happened after that. There was a feeling of being complete, and suddenly being both hot and cold and in pain and numb, and Jack was shouting at her, and Gil too, and having both of their voices come out of the same mouth was strange, and suddenly she felt like she was going to die for the second time.

Then, nothing.

Crystal woke up a few days after that, in a hospital in the Ghost Zone, surrounded by Jack and Shiva and the other wardens, and some of her Ghost Zone friends like Spectra and Kitty, and Skulker (who would not leave her alone like she wanted) and, infuriatingly, Danny and Sam and Tucker and their whole entourage of hybrids that had seemingly popped out of nowhere.

The first thing she said was, Am I alive? And everyone smiled at her, and they didn't need to say anything at all, because she could feel it in her fingertips that there was real blood there.

She was eighteen years old, just old enough to have graduated high school, and had her entire life back ahead of her, and the first thing she did as a human was break down and cry and cry and cry, and then laugh and laugh and laugh, and jump out of the hospital bed and rip out the cords and wires from her skin, and hug Jack's scaly dragon body like he was still Jack.

She returned to the human world with Danny and his gang, because they all seemed to know that she wasn't going to cause any trouble, even though she kept her guitar and it seemed to keep its powers, even if she couldn't use them as well.

Crystal started singing in clubs and worked as a waitress for a while, tried to find out what had happened to her parents (they were still alive, god bless them, and she turned up on their doorstep and they actually couldn't believe it, that she was there, and the three of them cried and laughed harder than she thought could have happened, explaining the whole thing to them when they got over the shock of seeing their only daughter risen from the grave) and was happy. It was easy to become famous, she thought, since all she had to do was claim that she was Ember McLain, which was true, with a major makeover, which was also true, and the record labels were all over her again.

But, even though she was living again and working on her dreams and hanging out with real, live humans for the first time in thirty years, something was missing.

She had an apartment in Amity Park, downtown, a few blocks away from the Manson Mansion. It was small, but she didn't need much, when she got the text on her cell phone.

Crystal, it said. It was from Danny. Get over to my house. Now. It's important.

He wasn't one for texting, usually, preferred to see people in person. Whatever it was, it needed attention immediately, and she dove out the door and ran over like her house was on fire, again.

She burst into the door to their makeshift command center, on the top floor, and almost tripped over Sam and Tucker, who were standing just inside.

What's going on? Is someone dead?

Danny had to chuckle at that. No more dead than I am.

Crystal pondered that for a moment, since Danny was sort of dead half the time and alive the rest of the time, but it didn't matter all that much in the end. Why am I here?

He appeared from out of the corner, the first time she had seen him since she'd woken up alive. For me, the familiar dragon said. For Jack.

She was confused, utterly baffled. Tell me what's going on, she demanded.

You'll see in a moment, Danny said, striding past her and getting in the elevator. Just wait here. I have to get it.

Jack nodded, and everyone else was smiling.

Guys, will you please stop being secretive, she groaned, crossing her arms. Honestly, she thought that this would be something more disastrous.

Sam walked up to her. What if we told you that we could bring Jack back?

Her world stopped for what seemed like forever. What? There were no other words to say.

The elevator made a pinging sound and opened. She turned and looked as Danny dragged a large, very strange looking object out. It looked like a large web of beads and feathers, but it was huge. Is that... ?

It's the Fenton Ghost Catcher, Danny said simply. It takes ghostly things and removes them from human things. We think, and here he pointed and Neil, off in the corner, that if we use it on Gildemeir, now with a gesture to the dragon in the other corner, that it will be able to separate Jack from him, since Jack is partially human.

She couldn't breathe. Her heart stopped. All she could do was look between Danny and Jack and everyone else.

We wanted you to be here, Sam said, coming up alongside of her and putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. Since he's your friend, you know?

Crystal nodded dumbly, and that seemed to be good enough for everyone. It was suddenly a bustle of activity, Danny and Neil moving the Ghost Catcher to the center of the room, the girls and Tucker clearing everything out of the way, and Gil, just standing there, calmly watching. Well, no, it was probably Jack, watching, because she didn't think that Gil could be so calm.

You ready? Danny said, and even though it was addressed to her dragon friend, she still nodded.

Gil floated up into the air, and, with a growl, took off at top speed towards the strange, glowing netting. She looked away just as he was to reach it, and behind her eyelids she saw a bright white light, and there was a sound of energy moving through the room, and then she had been flung back into the desk and there were the noises of groaning and panic and two loud thunks.

It took everyone a minute to recover, but in her confused and overwhelmed state, Crystal's body had decided that it would be best not to move again, ever, at least not until she'd sorted everything out. She could make out the sounds of voices. Everyone okay? We're fine over here. Did it work? Crystal?

There was another hand on her shoulder. Male. Warm. Crystal?

The voice was familiar. Deep. Liquid. Her eyes fluttered open, and as her eyes focused, the first thing she saw was the dark blue eyes – not like Danny's, because his were too bright, too happy. The next thing was the strong jaw, holding more wisdom and experience than Danny's could, and then the short, cut back black hair, just like she remembered it, close to his head but sticking up in the strangest places, out of his face and as neatly coiffed as he could get it.

Jack?

He smiled. Hey. It's nice to see you again.

There were tears in her eyes and her heart felt like it was going to burst and she leapt off the ground, threw her arms around his neck. They fit like they always had, perfectly, and he stumbled back a few paces before he wrapped his arms around her waist and hoisted her into the air, spinning them both around as they laughed and cried and just held each other.

She wasn't aware of the other seven people in the room, one of them being a very relieved dragon, all watching and smiling and the girls dabbing at their eyes a bit. All she could see was Jack, her Jack, same as he was the day that he'd vanished, with his black leather jacket and white tank top and muddy jeans and even muddier sneakers that had somehow never been cleaned in the thirty years since he'd been gone. And then, just as he was about to put her down and she'd started to slide down his body, she locked her legs around his waist and kissed him like she'd wanted to since she was thirteen years old.

He didn't even seem surprised, just hefted her up closer to him, one hand underneath her, the other on the back of her neck, and kissed her back like he, too, had waited an eternity for the opportunity.

There was some murmuring from the others, and she heard the distinct sound of someone going intangible, and then there was only silence in the rest of the room, which was good, because Jack was suddenly shoving her backwards and her back hit the wall and he broke the kiss long enough to pull his jacket off, still somehow not dropping her, and she assumed it had something to do with the ghost powers that he could hold her up with just one hand and not seem to show any effort in doing so.

Crystal wasn't a virgin, not by a long shot, and hadn't been since she was fifteen, behind the bleachers with a boy who she'd been smoking pot with, a boy she'd had no feelings for, but had only agreed to sleep with because she'd not had the money for the drugs. She hadn't enjoyed herself very much, to be sure, but it had been worth it at the time, because taking a virgin's virginity was apparently enough of a payment to get her a whole year's worth of weed. She'd come home to find both Jack and Ted on her bed, disappointed in her for lowering herself to such a standard, and it had hurt to see the looks on their faces.

The next time she'd had sex after that was when she was drunk at a college party she'd successfully snuck into, and one of the college boys had seduced her in a drunken haze, and that time she had definitely enjoyed herself, because he'd been experienced with women and he knew things about her body that she hadn't taken the time to figure out yet, and that was her first orgasm, in some stranger's bedroom, while the thumping music and blaring lights came in from under the door.

Crystal wasn't shy about her body, or who she'd slept with, because she didn't think it was much of a problem. She always used a condom, she was on birth control, and you didn't have to be in love to have good sex with somebody. The only person she had ever been shy about was Jack, because he was the only guy whose opinion she cared about. Ted too, yes, but there had never been any sexual tension with Ted, and he was more like a brother to her anyway.

She wasn't sure when Jack had lost his virginity, but it had come up one day, a few months before her seventeenth birthday, and he said he had, with one of the girls on the soccer team that he'd been infatuated with since puberty. Crystal's heart had broken a little bit that day, which maybe proved that she had wanted more than just sex from a man, but she put off thinking about it until later.

Thirty years was plenty of time to think about it. Since becoming a ghost, she'd had her fair share of boyfriends, flings, learned a lot about just what kind of trouble and fun you could get into when you could make your hands glow and turn invisible and float while you were having sex with someone. She'd dated Skulker, for a while, and at the time it had been nice to be with a man who could change everything about himself on a moment's notice (although once she found out what exactly was behind the metal suit, she'd dropped him).

So no, Crystal was in no way a naïve virgin, so when Jack, who'd had thirty years to forget everything he'd learned as a teenager, started fumbling at the buttons on her shirt, she slapped his hand away and yanked off his tank top like it was on fire. No, she said. Phase it off.

The good thing about Jack was that he didn't ask questions, except when he really needed to, and he followed her order like there was nothing wrong with it. Maybe he was trying not to think about the fact that the love of his life had a lifetime more sexual experience than he did. Still, he successfully removed her shirt without tearing it or losing buttons or taking too much time, and at least with bra straps he'd had enough experience to get them off without any hesitation.

They spun around so fast that she was dizzy, and he'd dropped her on the desk she'd slammed into, hard and cold and covered with papers. She swept her arm around to clear it of pens, documents, the lamp, and then he was bent over her and kissing and licking and sucking on her nipples and even though he may not have been the best at it, she moaned and arched off the wood because it was him, her Jack, the man she'd never fallen out of love with, and if nothing else he was enthusiastic.

But there was only so much foreplay one could stand when one hadn't had sex in thirty years, it seemed, especially when that one had the sex drive of an eighteen year old male, and he had phased off his pants and her pants and his boxers and her panties not a minute later, and she propped herself up onto her shoulders to look at him, and god did he look good naked, the abs still there, the broad shoulders, and down further still he was hard as a rock, and thick, and long, and dripping with anticipation and maybe he wasn't the biggest she'd ever had, or the most knowledgable she'd ever had, but this was someone she would have waited for her entire life if she'd known that it had been meant to be. Crystal spread her legs, and it was obvious from that point that the ghost half in Jack was in control, because his eyes flashed blood red and his skin became electric and cold to the touch, and even though he didn't change, not all the way, the smouldering look in his eyes was a dead giveaway that he wanted nothing else than to give into instinct and take her.

She didn't want to wait, didn't want to give him the opportunity to lose momentum and ask her is this okay? Do you want this? She reached down, grabbed him right at the base, and as he shuddered from the sudden contact, pushed him inside of her a couple inches. Only a couple inches, because as soon as he'd breached her he'd slammed himself forward, and it hurt in the best way for only a moment, because there was nothing like the flicker of pain that came from sudden, rushed sex, when you weren't quite wet enough and the friction was fantastic.

She couldn't stay upright on her elbows for long, not with him so fast and hard, and her knowing just how to angle her hips and meet him as to get him to hit everywhere she wanted, and she writhed, back against the desk, feeling that familiar tension inside of her, Jack, Jack, she screamed, grabbing his wrists where they were attached quite permanently to her hips, because she needed something to hold onto, and the power radiating off of him making her palms tingle with energy.

Maybe he wasn't expecting her to say anything, or maybe he wasn't expecting her to react so strongly, but he grinned and pumped harder and then, inside of her, went utterly cold and she screamed his name again, eyes forced shut from the change because it was unexpected and fantastic, and when she could pry them open again his hair had gone snow white and his eyes were completely red and his skin was glowing and there was just a little bit of confusion on his face, like he didn't know why the urge to change had been so strong, but there was also immense satisfaction, the kind that you got when you gave in to such an intense instinct.

And she came once, and then twice, before he did, because she was still giving him breathless orders of how to move and where to rub, and suddenly he was hot inside her, and the energy was gone from him, and his hair and eyes were back to normal, and he was shaking as he tried to hold himself up, to keep from falling on her, because there was no bed that he could roll onto.

They looked at each other, because the shock was hitting them that, yes, it had finally happened, after all those years, and that now it was over, and real life was back. Her eyes were wet as she sat up and wrapped her arms around his sweaty shoulders.

You're real, she whispered.

Between pants, she swore she heard him chuckle. Yeah, he replied. I am.

He pulled himself off of her, which was sad, because suddenly she was cold and alone. She slid off the desk, chuckling a bit as her feet hit the floor, because she realized that neither of them had removed their shoes, and he was looking a little sheepish as he contemplated his socks.

I can't believe you're human again, Crystal said, because it was better than remaining in an awkward silence.

Funny, Jack said, as he picked up his clothes. I thought the same thing when you woke up in that hospital bed a few months ago. He held out her shirt. She glanced at it, took it, pulled it on haphazardly without bothering with her bra.

More silence.

So, what now? Crystal asked, as though they hadn't just had sex, as if things were back to normal, even though her stomach felt like it was tied up in knots.

Jack shrugged, his back to her, probably because he was blushing as he remembered what he'd done. I don't know. I can't go back to the Ghost Zone. I think I've worn out my welcome. I don't know if I can stay in the human world, though. I mean, I don't have anywhere to go right now. I don't have a home. My parents are dead.

Crystal cringed. She'd gone hunting for Ted and Jack's families after she'd been reunited with her own, just to see if they were still around. Ted's had been, but since Crystal knew he was dead, she didn't try to reconnect. And Jack's? Well, she'd found them both. Their headstones were near the one that they had made up for Jack when he'd gone missing. It seemed like losing their only child was too much for them, because they'd died a few months after.

Well, Crystal muttered, twiddling her thumbs as she hunted for her pants. You could always come stay with me.

More of that awkward silence. Crystal busied herself with removing fuzz from her clothes and making sure that the invisible wrinkles were out.

You'd do that? That would be okay? His tone of voice made him sound like a sad orphan child, not the wise and battle hardened man he'd been all these years, and certainly not like someone who had been sharing a consciousness with a five thousand year old dragon.

Of course. Crystal walked over, grabbed his hands. You're my friend. You're more than my friend, Jack.

I think that goes without saying, Jack said, with another chuckle. Considering what we just did, I think we've established that we're more than friends. He stepped closer to her, kissed her. She melted.

When he pulled back, his face seemed to glow, he was smiling so much. I love you, Crystal. I've loved you since high school.

Crystal giggled. Yeah. I know. I love you too.

She took it back. NOW his face seemed to glow, and he picked her up and spun her around again, this time without any of the tears and only laughter.

When they went downstairs a few minutes later, the six other teenagers looked up at them, inquisitively, curiously, and having assumed that the noises coming from upstairs were ghost rats and not their friends.

Everything okay? Chaiya asked, looking a little ill.

Yeah, Crystal said, holding Jack's hand. Everything's great.


	4. Jazz

Trent and I fell in love at first sight.

Well, that isn't really true. I didn't start falling in love with him until that first motorcycle ride around Cambridge, but I was immediately attracted to him from the get-go, and he was immediately attracted to me.

He's told me that he didn't start falling in love with me until that motorcycle ride, too, so I guess great minds think alike.

I study Child Psychology at Harvard, and I'm about to graduate. I wouldn't say I'm the very top of my class, but I would say that I do well and that I've learned a lot. Trent is a Mechanical Engineer and in my grade. We met because we both took Psych 101 second semester Freshman year, me for a requirement and him because it sounded interesting. We ended up in the same discussion section and that was that. We were hooked on each other.

Trent was from Georgia and he had a slight southern twang to his voice. It wasn't really all that overpowering, very subtle, but enough so that I noticed it and he sounded foreign, which intrigued me. We went on a couple of dates and I thought he was really cute, with his red hair and the brown eyes and the freckles and the tan skin. He had a nice butt, too, which I caught myself checking out a few times during presentations. After we got coffee, one day, he offered to drive me home. I said yes, not thinking anything of it, and he handed me a helmet.

I remember what he said very clearly. "You might want to hang on. My bike is pretty fast."

It might be due to Johnny 13's influence, yes, but there is some part of me, now, that really loves motorcycles. The speed, the wind, being able to clutch on to the man in front of you. I love it. Trent's was red, shiny, and had just a little bit of mud caked on the tires. It was like a dream, hopping on behind him as we sped off.

He took the long way back to my dorm.

We started dating a few weeks after that. We moved slow, because I was a stranger to romance and he was raised a strict Catholic and believed in not having sex until you knew that it was right. He wasn't going so far as to wait for marriage, but it was still important that he feel a lot about me first. Our first kiss was during midterms, when I was crying about thinking I was going to fail and that everyone else was smarter than me, and that normal college breakdown that happens, and he kissed me to distract me. It was a wonderful moment, although I wish now that I hadn't spent most of it with a wet face, and sniffling.

I have clear memories of all of our initial romantic encounters. Trent had an exam a few weeks after midterms and he was stressed out, and kissing him always seemed to calm him down (plus, it was fun) so I planted one on him. He eventually managed to wiggle a hand under my shirt, and I was a little scared, but he was very gentle, even with all of the tension I could feel under his skin, always asking, "Is this okay?" and "Do you want me to stop?"

He didn't feel comfortable with going further than that, so we stalled there for a few weeks. Eventually, though, we got to the next step. I don't remember if there was anything significant going on, or if I just wanted to be close to him.

"Can I take your shirt off?" he asked, hesitating, fingers nervously playing with the hem of my black sweater. I nodded, more than a bit nervous, but he gently pulled the wool over my head and off, and ran his hands along my sides and smiled at me like I was the world. In a moment of bravery, I tugged his shirt up, and he laughed and whipped it off like an expert.

I pulled myself into his chest, and he was so warm and smooth, and we snuggled for a while before he drummed his way down to my hip with his hand and slowly stroked the skin just above the hem of my jeans.

Trent asked me if we wanted to get an apartment together on the day that I showed him what my naked body looked like, and just before the first time we ever had sex, he asked me if I wanted to marry him.

I said yes.

The look on his face was phenomenal as he kissed me, like I had given him the world just by saying one word, and he laughed and ran his hands all over me and told me that I was the best thing that I had ever happened to him.

"I love you, Jasmine," he said, and hearing my name on his lips was like a drug. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Mom and Dad were thrilled when I came home a few weeks later for Danny's birthday, showing them the ring. They thought Trent was a fine young man, and I agreed. Even Danny approved, and that was a feat in itself, given how much he'd disliked all of my other boyfriends.

Our wedding was planned for the summer between Junior and Senior year, just after Danny had graduated from Casper High, so that everyone could come along. It was a moderately sized celebration, with all of Danny's gang coming, a few of the ghosts that he worked with, since I'd been helping him our with trying to get the diplomatic stuff down, and of course our parents, some friends of the family, and assorted relatives I hadn't seen in years.

Trent's family was there, too. His mother, Nicole, was a sweetheart, and his dad, Clay loved me. His two older sisters, Mary and Jessie, were part of the bridal party, along with Sam and Valerie, Sam being my maid of honor. Trent's best friend Ray was our best man, and Danny and Tucker looked great as groomsmen.

My dad cried when he walked me down the aisle, and he called me his princess and kissed my head as he handed me off. Mom cried the entire time, and Danny looked proud, his eyes shining at me as Trent and I exchanged rings and said our vows.

I've never loved someone as much as I love Trent, and he may not be the perfect guy, but he's perfect for me.

We spent the rest of the summer in Georgia, by the ocean, having saved up our money (and getting a rather large sum from my mother and father) to rent a house on the shore for a few weeks.

The first night of our honeymoon, we fell asleep in each others arms, and I dreamed about him.

Later, I realized that this would be a recurring dream, but we'll get to that.

We were both living in the same house, sharing the four stories with eight other people, and we weren't together. My brain decided that I was dating Johnny 13, even though that was ridiculous, but you know how that stuff works. But Johnny was in the Ghost Zone, far away, and I was in college, doing college things like studying and going to parties and hanging out with my friends. I wasn't happy with Johnny, that was for sure. He tried to call me all the time, and I just didn't want to talk to him anymore. When we saw each other, it was fleeting, and I tried to act like the doting, caring girlfriend I once was. I was surprised that he didn't pick up on my deceptions.

But Trent and I, well, there was something there. Tension, between the two of us. When Johnny wasn't around, he was the main man in my life, and I talked with him, drank with him, laughed with him, played chess with him. We stayed up to all hours, talking about boys, and girls, and me trying my best to get a rise out of him because that was how I had to express myself. In real life, I wasn't the teasing type, but dream me? I guess if you were in a long distance relationship, and had a crush on another man, you would turn into the teasing type.

We'd get into pillow fights and throw candy at each other at two in the morning. We got take-out every week and traded who paid. I liked Chinese and he liked Wings. We'd sit next to each other on the bus (field trips? I think my dream brain wasn't sure about what year this was) and would poke each other, talk about love, call each other names, and get heckled by the rest of our friends.

I woke up confused, wondering where it had all come from. Was I secretly in love with Johnny 13, after all these years? As that second day went by, I decided that I wasn't, with a resounding no, thank you very much. But that second night I dreamed it again.

Everything in this strange dream was telling me that Trent was the right guy. And, dream Me was thinking, if he wasn't, why am I spending so much time thinking about him? Why am I so down after Johnny leaves, if I act so excited when Johnny is there? I love Johnny, don't I? Then why am I being drawn to somebody else?

Maybe it was because Trent was new, and exciting, and attractive. Johnny was attractive, too, but in my dream we had been dating for years and things just got stale. He'd put on a few pounds and having sex with him just wasn't doing it for me anymore (this especially confused me when I woke up). But, dream Me was having vivid sex dreams about Trent that made me wake up confused and panting and desperately needed a shower (my dreams within dreams were always strange) and what was a girl to do? I cared a lot about Johnny, and he was safe, and he loved me, but he was so far away, and I was in school, and I just wasn't sure if I was still in love with him.

Then, one day, it happened. The dream seemed to take a lifetime to play through, and one of the dream nights, I was sitting on Trent's bed, and Trent sat next to me, and I'm not sure what he said. Could have been anything. But, he told me that he'd had a crush on me, in years past, before I dated Johnny, and that he still might. And I told him that I had a crush on him, too, and I still might, and he kissed me.

Maybe it was wrong for dream Me to have done that, but at least it was just a dream, and it wasn't like dreams were going to matter in the long run.

And he kissed me, and kissed me, and I kissed him back. It was wrong, yes, but of course felt perfectly right, because here was the man I was spending the rest of my life with, and my dream seemed to be saying to me, he is here, he is perfect, you have made a good decision, we have no doubt about that. And in my dream it was very satisfying to have finally given in, and even though there was some guilt in the back of my mind, it was buried away underneath the feelings that I was experiencing.

I woke up happy after that night. It was the beginning of day three, and Trent was surprised when I pounced on him, half-asleep.

The next few weeks we explored the shore and played in the ocean, collected seashells like little kids and buried each other in the sand. It was like a vacation from maturity and obligation and they were probably the best weeks of my life, so far. I loved watching the waves, and watching Trent splash around in the surf, yelling at me on the shore, telling me to get in the water before he threw me in himself, and then later making good on his promise when I was stubborn, even though I was laughing the whole time.

We went back to school at the end of it, having been cut off from our friends and family and all of the other obligations. I called my parents and they told me to call Danny, and when I did that he told me that Sam was pregnant, and they were keeping the baby, and the wedding was going to be a few years from now, and please don't freak out.

"She's due in January," he said, sounding sheepish. I could only imagine the look on his face. "We were wondering if you would try to be there when the baby is born."

I said yes, and congratulated him, even though I was a little concerned that they were going to be parents so young, and maybe they had rushed into things, and Trent told me that we couldn't say anything about that, given that I wasn't even 22 yet and I was a married woman.

They said they'd named Valerie the godmother, and Tucker the godfather, and that they were really excited, but scared too. Danny sounded, on the phone, like the whole thing wasn't exactly his idea, but at the same time I could tell that he was happy, if freaked out and nervous and all of the other things that new dads were.

I wasn't able to visit until Thanksgiving, because of all sorts of things coming up. Projects, research, life, grad school, homework, Trent. The dreams came back a few times, still seeming to tell me that I had done the right thing by leaving Johnny and going with Trent. I have to admit, I probably should have wondered more at why I was having them so suddenly and so often, but it didn't seem important at the time.

It was Black Friday, I remember. Mom and Sam and I had all woken up early, we were going to go out shopping, just us girls. I remember Sam looked so huge for only seven months, like she was about ready to pop. She was rubbing her stomach for the entire break, looking lost, scared even.

We had just gotten in the car when she gasped from the backseat, and when we turned around to look at her, all she said was, "My water just broke."

Mom shouted something, I don't quite remember what it was. Something about being premature. I don't know exactly. Sam seemed surprisingly calm, explaining that ghosts had shorter pregnancies so she guessed that she must have been having a halfa. She looked happy, at that.

We raced back inside and shouted for Danny and for my father and there was a flurry of activity. We called Valerie, because she was the designated wing-man, to carry the baby bag and all that stuff. Danny, of course, was losing his mind, phasing through the floor and the ceiling as he was frantically hunting for things that he didn't think he'd have to get packed so soon.

Sam told us to call Neil, because her and Neil had grown close during her pregnancy, and he seemed to be the expert on all things ghost, anyway. He met us at the hospital, looking frazzled. Danny's nerves were worn and they immediately started shouting back and forth at each other, arguing about what to do. It was funny, in retrospect, that Sam rolled her eyes even as she started having contractions.

In related news, birth does NOT look like fun. Especially when you're someone like Sam, who likes to throw things when she's in pain.

Sam was in labor for a very long time. She was up to eighteen hours when Neil started to get worried about the baby. He looked around at us, said that it shouldn't have taken this long. Ghosts have fast births, or so his mother had said.

Mom immediately asked if his mother had been a ghost, and when Neil replied yes, she said, "Maybe it's because Sam's human."

The hush that came over the room was cold and stifling. Neil jumped into action, yelled at us to not go anywhere and call him if it was important, and phased through the floor like he was on fire. Needless to say, it didn't help us feel better.

An hour later, Neil showed up with a ghost woman I recognized from my wedding (I think someone had called her Shiva?) and Gildemeir, that dragon that Danny was in talks with, trying to make a peace treaty. The three of them barreled into the birthing room, and I could hear Danny and Sam yelling at all of them. It caused quite a commotion, let me tell you.

They shut the door, though, and all of a sudden all we could hear were the occasional screams that women having a child let out when they have a particularly bad contraction.

We stared at that door, the whole lot of us, the women worried and the men pretending not to be, as people walked by, more concerned with being trampled at Walmart. It looked like there were lights flashing, and I could sort of make out murmurs, but I have no idea about what.

Around hour twenty six, as most of us were asleep and as I was drinking lukewarm cafeteria coffee, I heard the unmistakable noise of a baby, and once my tired brain had figured out what that meant, I woke everyone else up, celebrating.

It seemed like forever until someone came out. It was Neil, smiling. "We had to phase her out," he said, and then almost like an afterthought, "It's a girl."

She was a little cranky, to be sure, after having such a rough day, but we got to meet little Joanna Marie Fenton a little while later. Her head was a funny shape and her eyes were all screwed shut and she was very small in her little pink blanket and hat, and she was beautiful in her mother's arms, even as dead as Sam looked. Danny's eyes glowed with happiness, and Mom started to cry a little when she picked up her little granddaughter. I've never seen Dad so proud, either, as when he clapped his big hand on Danny's shoulder and smiled at him. There was a little tuft of blonde hair on her head, and when she opened her eyes and looked up at her parents, we all saw that they were purple.

She looks just like you, Danny said to Sam with a smile.

Good, Sam said. Heaven forbid she inherit _your_ hair.

We all laughed, and the extended family and friends meandered out of the room to let the little family bond and coo over the new life.

I guess I should have paid more attention to Trent, but at that point I was far too happy with the whole situation. I was an aunt, and I wanted the world to know it, and I now very much wanted a child of my own (I mentioned this off-hand to Mom. Her immediate response was NO). I was chatting with everyone when Rose asked where he'd gone.

"He was just here," I said, right as we heard the bang.

A black and green blur zoomed out of the door – no, through the door – wailing painfully. It was too fast for all of us to follow, but the black and white and very angry Danny that shot after him let us know that it had to be a ghost. He was quickly followed by a roaring dragon and an icy blue bur. I couldn't catch who the culprit was, but I immediately knew what had happened, because Sam was screaming and every halfa in the room had gone ghost and bolted through the wall after them.

Mom and Dad burst into action, pulling ectoguns out from nowhere (only in my family would they bring weapons to see a baby) and running down the stairs, yelling and already making plans, and that only left me and Crystal to burst into Sam's hospital room. She was trying desperately to get up and get out of bed and get her clothes on, and, just as we all already knew, Joanna was gone. Tears were running down Sam's face as she fumbled with her hospital gown, and she looked about ready to kill someone, glaring especially at me.

"Who?" Crystal asked.

"Trent," Sam spat, her voice breaking.

I think I passed out. I don't remember what happened. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, and Crystal was shaking me to get up because we had to go.

I felt like someone had put me in a block of ice. Trent? It couldn't be Trent. I loved Trent, and he loved me, and more importantly, Trent was not a ghost. Danny would have known if Trent were a ghost.

"You have to tell me exactly what happened," I demanded as soon as I came to.

Sam, who had apparently collapsed on the bed while I was unconscious, launched into a tearful explanation. Trent hadn't walked out with the rest of them, but stayed. It was like he'd been possessed, she said. He had glared at Danny, and his eyes turned green, and he started to glow, and then he'd grabbed the baby from out of Danny's arms and took off with her.

It couldn't have been him. I knew that immediately. It had to be one of Danny's enemies, just choosing to take Trent over so that he'd have some sort of a body. Luckily, Crystal agreed, and Sam was angry enough to accept our proposal without a fight.

Crystal managed to find a wheelchair and we loaded Sam into it, speeding off down the hallway. Sam's car was in the hospital parking garage and we sped off in the direction the ghosts had left. They were pretty easy to find, anyway, because the early morning sky was lit up with red and green and purple and blue ectoplasm, and all we really had to do was get close to it.

I was driving and Sam was leaning out the window with an ectogun from under the seat, and Crystal carried her guitar everywhere and even though it didn't work quite as well as it used to, she could still stand out the sunroof and shoot things when we got there.

I drove like a madman downtown, and we finally pulled up by the park, where our seven were fighting off someone who looked very much like a possessed Trent. The baby was nowhere in sight – no, wait, there she was, crying her little eyes out in a floating cage of ectoplasm.

Sam saw her, and screamed, and unsurprisingly started shooting at Trent-that-wasn't with her gun. Crystal, bless her heart, jumped into the fray too and started blasting all sorts of things.

I have no idea how five halfas, four ghost hunters, two ghosts, and two pissed off women did not manage to take down their enemy, but whatever was possessing Trent managed to avoid all of the hits and deal a lot of damage back.

"Get the shadow, get the shadow!" I heard Rose shout over the din, and I looked closer, as I ran forward with a net shooter. Wait...yeah, Trent wasn't throwing a shadow, even with all of the lights and energy flashing around in the air. And there was an inky black presence floating around and splitting off into different pieces and wrapping around everyone...

Things made sense.

Johnny 13.

Fuck, how long had he been inside Trent, waiting? Was Trent Johnny 13, who just married me to get revenge? No, couldn't be. Danny would have known. Someone would have known. Two and a half years is a long time to lay in wait just for an opportunity.

Thinking was a bad thing to do in the middle of a fight, but luckily, Danny knocked me out of the way of a blast. We rolled behind a tree as he screamed at me that I was going to get myself killed and a lot of rather hurtful things that I would forgive him for later, given that his newborn daughter was in the hands of a villain.

I was safe behind the tree, at least temporarily. Think. Johnny 13 was after Danny and Sam's baby. Why? He probably wanted revenge. Maybe Kitty wanted a child of their own and was impatient. Maybe someone was paying him off? He'd gotten into Trent's body...when?

It clicked.

The dreams.

I slapped myself in the forehead with my net shooter. Stupid, stupid. You've been having dreams about Trent and Johnny for almost a year, now. Since the honeymoon (oh God, that was a horrifying thought). It might make sense, if he'd manage to worm his way into Trent a few times. Maybe you knew that, that's why the dreams were happening, Jazz. And Danny was never around when you were having them, except for just now, at the hospital. And everyone could have been too on edge to notice and...

I was suddenly very, very angry.

I think really clearly when I'm angry.

I had a net shooter. Johnny was probably not expecting me to have that, instead of a gun, because the logical choice would be a gun. I had to get close enough to aim it at him. It would take Trent down long enough for someone to get a Thermos out. That would suck Johnny out of Trent's body. If that didn't work, Fenton Dream Catcher. Someone would have to catch the baby.

I looked around the tree. All right. Mom, Sam, and Rose were over by the cage trying to get the baby out. All of the men and Valerie were attacking Trent/Johnny. Chaiya, Shiva, and Crystal were handling the Shadow. I could hear Gildemeir shouting orders and making strategies. All right. I know for a fact that Danny had a Thermos – he always had a Thermos. He SLEPT with one. And I have a net.

Around the tree I went, a few hundred feet from the fight. I was probably only going to get one chance to aim and fire, and I had to try not to get another of the boys in underneath the net. Johnny was facing away from me. I had about five seconds before he turned around, Neil was coming up on his left. Four, the gun was up, three, Neil slammed Trent into the ground, two, Danny and Jack both came roaring down on him.

I fired.

Mom and Dad would have been proud of how well it worked, if they'd been paying attention. The net landed square on the four of them, brawling, and they all shouted in confusion and terror. After all, it was supposed to suppress their powers. All of them shouted, except Danny. Danny did not stop brawling. He kept right on punching and clawing and brutalizing Trent/Johnny, and there was blood, and all I could think about was, that's my husband and my brother, and oh god, he might actually kill him.

"Stop, stop!" I shouted, and Neil and Jack both had to pull Danny off. I've never seen him so mad as he was then. Shaking, and his eyes had actually flashed red with rage, and he was throwing off so much energy that the net wasn't sucking away all of it fast enough.

I'm not sure how, but the girls had managed to tie the Shadow around a tree, and off in the distance the cage had disintegrated, Sam holding little Joanna and crying as the little girl screamed her little lungs out. Mom and Dad wandered over, and, bless Mom's heart, she pulled out her own heavy duty Thermos and aimed right at Trent.

It was Johnny, all right, screaming in rage as he left Trent's body, vowing revenge and cursing. The Thermos didn't fully muffle his sounds.

I threw the net off of him and the other three. The good news was that he didn't look to be too hurt. There were bruises and Danny had given him a black eye and the tips of his fingers looked burnt from all of the energy, and there was rope-burn from the net, and his wrist was hanging funny and he was unconscious. But he was breathing okay, and he wasn't bleeding except a little bit from a cut on his face, and Danny was now glaring at the Thermos rather than him, so that was good.

We went back to the hospital around 10 AM, two hours after the whole event had started. Sam refused to let Joanna go when the doctors tried to take her and check her over, but she relented enough to let them do some tests from her arms. Danny stayed glued to their sides and pointedly avoided looking at me. Rattled though they were, the doctors let Joanna go home later that day, saying that as far as they could tell, she was a perfectly healthy baby.

They put Trent in a hospital bed nearby. He woke up in the late afternoon and had no memory of the day's events. The last thing he knew, he said, he was getting woken up to go to the hospital on Black Friday, and everything after that was completely gone. They put his wrist in a cast and the cut on his face needed a few stitches, and once we explained what had happened everything was fine and dandy. We went home and I made sure to ghost-proof our apartment. I would rather have Danny and company not be able to phase in and keep out the ghosts we don't want.

I don't know what happened to Johnny, but I assume that Danny was involved. He had a paranoid look to him for weeks, and didn't trust anyone around Sam or Joanna except me, our parents, and Tucker. He was always watching Trent, too, which I didn't like, but who could blame him?

Danny visited one day with a dead, cold look in his eyes, like he'd done something terrible. He refused to talk about it, but the next time I saw Johnny 13, he was in a wheelchair. No one talked about it, and honestly people seem to try and pretend that it never happened. But I know it was Danny that hurt him.

I try not to think about what Danny did. It makes me sick to my stomach.

Maybe someday when I have kids, I'll understand.


End file.
